


sur tes cheveux roux

by orphan_account



Category: Free!
Genre: Dacryphilia, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-25
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 08:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2017713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>upon your red hair</p>
            </blockquote>





	sur tes cheveux roux

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perculious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perculious/gifts).



Monsoon season, the rain falling in sheets; at first Haruka didn't notice it because the downpour was all-encompassing, a welcome hello from the waters above.  It greeted his skin like a downward kiss, like elation or flight; the hard erratic cascade.  Makoto and the others had gone ahead inside the station - Makoto well aware Haru could not be forced beneath an umbrella, Gou's voice lifting in a concern that trailed off the further they went.  
  
The sight of a plastic wrapper neon yellow, plastered helplessly to the concrete steps - leaves bowing under the weight and springing up again as the rain rolled off, the swaying of trees, but oh, overall, the noise of water hitting everything.  Haruka had grown old and sensible enough not to run outdoors at inconvenient times to catch rainfall - for example in the middle of class - but today had been timed perfectly, the storm breaking right at closing bell.    
  
He'd stripped with his usual efficiency, shirt shoes trousers folded in his bag which was (of course) waterproof and out into the weather in his jammers, which (of course) he'd been wearing.  They couldn't use the outdoor pool in a thunderstorm - Rin saying he had come to take them over to Samezuka, Haruka heard him talking to Makoto, the brash negotiation, but he'd been standing outside like a statue in perfect peace, palms skyward, the embodiment of serenity.  
  
A sort of vibrating harmony just below his skin; rainwater in his eyes, mouth, the slide, the soaring feeling of flight within his ribcage.  
  
It was perfect but -  
  
He didn't notice it at first because the magnitude of the storm was vast enough to drown other noises out but this, too, was water.  Lingering outside the train station Haru slowly adjusted to his surroundings and listened for the noise he'd heard again.  
  
Rin was standing behind him and had let his umbrella fall sideways, the downpour pelting his face, eyes shut.  
  
(But that wasn't it - that wasn't the thing he was looking for.)  
  
When Rin opened his eyes the rims were red and ah, yes, that, that was it.    
  
The soft noise of tears escaping.  
  
"Rin," Haruka said, and trailed off.  
  
"You didn't see shit," Rin huffed at him.  
  
Haruka didn't dignify that with a serious respose, letting his facial expression speak for him.  Rin pulled an answering face and that was that, exchange concluded.  But it was beautiful, somehow, to Haruka; that the sky had cracked open for the first monsoon of the season and that Rin was weeping in it, mixing water with water.    
  
It occurred to him a beat later that this was not normal, that tears meant you had to ask:  
  
"Why?"  (why are you crying this time? what's hurt you? why drop your umbrella, you aren't in your jammers, idiot.)  
  
"I don't know," Rin mumbled, and Haruka watched large tears roll down his face and felt the brief urge to gather them up, collect them in his hands the way he'd been catching rain.  He wasn't sure if Rin was lying, or half lying.  
  
"Idiot," he said, and Rin laughed, a low fluttering noise.  This, too, Haruka had the urge to catch in his palms; shelter it like something small, something fragile.    
  
They stood outside the train station until the tears stopped rolling out of Rin's eyes - about three minutes or so, his breathing ragged - and without thinking about it Haru took him by the wrist and stood with him, shutting his umbrella for him.  Rin didn't need to explain.    
  
Haru certainly never explained himself and yet Rin managed to understand; this was different, the process was not identical in reverse, but it was similar.  an unconscious sentiment that told him: this is nothing to worry about.  Everything is still all right.  
  
"I still don't see the appeal of running around like a maniac," Rin muttered, following Haru into the awning, "out in crazy weather like this -"  
  
"Where no one could possibly notice you crying," Haru interjected, flat with subdued amusement.  
  
" - shut up, Haru," Rin groaned.  The tops of his cheekbones were flushed a conscpicuous dull red.  "Jesus."  
  
... ah.  
  
"But I did notice," Haru pointed out.  There was something victorious warming the pit of his stomach as he said it; water sluiced off of him in sheets, but his bag was still mostly dry, it was just a matter of his hair -   
  
"So what. you want a prize?" Rin mumbled, but there was no heat to it and after that parting remark (almost obligatory, Haru thought - spoken aloud only for the sake of maintaining the rhythm of the banter) the two of them settled into companionable silence, walking to the end where their friends had gathered.    
  
In the end Makoto toweled Haru's hair off with a spare shirt and Gou had packed a towel  - she looked like she was having fun, Haru thought, scolding Rin for standing out in the rain like a dummy, come on, hand over your shirt - no don't give it to me put in on the bench, it's soaked! jeez!  
  
The warmth in the pit of his stomach didn't fade for a long time - not after the joint practice concluded, not after he'd said goodbye to Rin at the Samezuka gym and not after he'd made it home to his own bathtub.  
  
That was perhaps the first time; the second if you counted the tussle at the relay, but this one was distinct from that precedent because Rin had _decided_ to let him watch.  
  


* * *

  
  
The next time they had (by Haru's bellweather sense of his relationship with Rin) reached the tenuous plateau of close-friendship, happening to go everywhere together without actually saying anything about it - no one else said anything about it either, though, and Haruka was aware in a dull way that this was probably due more to Makoto's intervention than any innate wellspring of tact on the part of the Iwatobi team.    
  
Food and ingredients for the preparation thereof were available at the Tachibana household in abundance but the heat - the heat was oppressive and unbearable, and not even Mrs Tachibana wanted to cook, so after Nagisa had elbowed him enough Haru had consented to go pick up convenience store junk food instead.   
  
Rin had come along because that was the way of things now; whenever the older Matsuoka hesitated, paused before getting up, tossed Haruka questioning glances (am I wanted? can I?) Haru found himself waiting, with infinite patience, for Rin to find his resolve and follow.  
  
The convenience store didn't carry mackerel, he discovered to his disappointment.  
  
It had a variety of bento boxes and cold pudding desserts, though - Nagisa had shoved extra crumpled bills into his pocket and chirped ice cream! ice cream!  
  
"Haru, I'm," Rin began, trailing behind Haruka in the aisle, and then failed to conclude the sentence.  
  
Something off. Something wrong this time.  Haru turned.  
  
Rin was staring hard at the floor, his brow and jaw taut.  
  
... Something not right with the universe.  Haru adjusted the weight of the shopping basket, considered him.  "Just - wait for me outside the store," he said.  The sun was setting - it wasn't as awful as it had been all day.  
  
"... yeah," Rin muttered, tugging his shirt collar and stalking off like a wounded animal retreating.  
  
(A mistake.  Wrong thing to say.)  
  
The sales clerk was tired and didn't seem to be paying attention; she asked Haruka three times if he wanted a bag, and it took far too long to complete the transaction.   
  
(hurry, or you'll miss it)  
  
After three minutes of careful scanning he spotted Rin curled into himself on a park bench half a block down the street, fingers steepled in front of his face, elbows on his knees, wreathed in the patchwork shadow of leaves at sundown.  Like he was protecting his stomach, or folded up around some deep internal hurt.    
  
Haruka didn't really notice he was running until he stopped, abrupt and hard, in front of Rin - who appeared just as startled, wine-red eyes snapping open in something like shock.  Whatever thoughts he'd been lost in had pulled him far enough away from reality that he hadn't noticed Haruka looking for him; it irritated Haruka, spurred him into saying:  
  
"Are you always going to run away?"  
  
Rin's mouth opened; words failed to emerge.  Instead -   
  
(told you so.)  
  
\- he began to cry in a stunned, silent way, mouth still open.  The tears welled up like water flowing up from the earth, some deep and long-defended pain.  
  
The drops, as they rolled down his face, caught the sunset and glowed a bright amber-orange. It was as if Rin's tears had their own color, their own phosphorescence; like all of the water in his veins and in his eyes and in his blood was infused with sunlight, as though Rin were lit up with his pain, his emotions dripping out of him like mercury glittering from cracked glass.  
  
These tears were intercepted.  Haru caught with his thumbs, hands bracketing that wordless cry of hurt in an instinctive grab.  
  
"You don't have to run.  You can stay beside me," Haru heard himself saying and to his own ears he sounded softer - kinder, less annoyed.  He didn't understand yet, but he was confident he would.  
  
The hot tears slid down over his fingertips and across his skin and soaked into him, the way Rin had been soaking into him since they were both children, a soft helpless attempt to join himself to Haru that grew less and less rebuffed with time.  Water in the burning heat; oasis in the desert, and Haruka thought - ah.  that had been the right thing to say.  Until Rin found his words and the unspoken questions found their way out of his constricted throat: this was the right thing to say.  
  
"You don't have to run anymore," he repeated, firm and decisive, and gathered Rin closer, tucking his head into his shirt.  
  
Rin wept himself hoarse and the ice cream melted; after he'd wiped away the last of Rin's tears Haruka wound up heading back into the store to buy more.  
  
"I want to stay here," Rin said, quietly; he'd done a number on his throat but they'd split a popsicle and now if he kept his voice down it was difficult to tell he'd been weeping.  They were on the train back.   
  
Haruka had texted Makoto a simple "on our way" and received a cheerful reply that contained no questions.  This was in and of itself somewhat suspicious because they had been gone for almost an hour, but Haruka was content not to investigate it at that precise moment because Rin was resting his head against Haruka's left shoulder, and the scent of his soft hair was faint vanilla or cinnamon - something Gou had picked for him, Haru guessed.    
  
It was pleasant, like the warmth of Rin's body in the air-conditioned car, like the rasp in Rin's throat (because Rin had been crying for him, him, him).  
  
"... on this train," Haruka murmured in return, equally hushed.  He curled his fingers a little tighter around Rin's, pressed more of their thighs together.  Rin snorted.  
  
"No.  Asshole."  
  
Haru discovered himself smiling, a small pull at the edge of his mouth.  
  
"In Japan."  
  
"No.  Well - yeah, but that's not what I meant."  
  
"By my side."  
  
"... yeah."  When he looked at Rin he was struck by the way his smile resembled that of his younger self - unselfconscious.  "Romantic, right?" Rin asked him, and had the decency to look a little embarrassed.    
  
"Idiot," Haru murmured after a sufficiently judgmental pause to cover how much that touched him; but Rin only laughed, possibly because Haru was squeezing his hand in a manner that brooked no argument and no possibility of doubt.    
  
Neither of them said anything further aloud, not on that ride back to the Tachibana household.   
  
Still, Haruka thought of it as the second episode: it was the second time Rin had, in his reluctant irritating way, chosen to cry in front of him.  and that could only be good.  
  



End file.
